iPhoto Hot Tips page is very good

Even Adam Engst found things here he didn't know...

Apple - Support - iPhoto - Hot Tips

Sometimes photos look better in a particular context when "flipped" horizontally... e.g., have your two kids face each other on a two up photo page. It seems few people know about the contextual menu option that allows you to do this easily. Simply cntrl+click on a photo in a book, card, or calendar and select "Mirror Image."

Definitely worth a close read. Short too.

This is why I wait for 10.5.3 ...

A very good example of why 10.5 is still not ready for me:

Spanning Sync Blog: Update on the Leopard iCal Sync Bug

...We've filed this bug with Apple (bug #5597932) and, given the number of people affected by it, are optimistic that it will be fixed in Mac OS X 10.5.2, rumored to be shipping later this month. In the mean time you should:

• Consider this bug before upgrading to Leopard from Tiger
• Make frequent backups of iCal (File > Back up iCal...)
• Disable the Address Book birthday calendar if you think you might be running into the problem

We understand and share the frustration this bug has caused our users—and all Mac users trying to sync their iCal calendars with other devices and applications. We look forward to a permanent fix from Apple...

Apple has a culture of innovation - obviously. Quality? Customer service? Not so much.

It's just not in their DNA. The saving grace is a very high quality customer base that notices problems and complains about them. If not for that customer base I'd still be on XP - no matter how excellent Apple's innovation.

When Apple makes a big move, experienced customers know they'll break stuff rather than miss dates or sacrifice secrecy. When 10.5 slipped last Feb I thought it wouldn't ship before March 2008. I should have said it wouldn't be ready to use before March 2008.

The good news, for those of us who can wait, is that by March of 2008 10.5 might be safe to use. Personally I'm thinking May 2008  looks better.

Hard on people who need new hardware though ...

Adobe Lightroom - kind of nice

Adobe Lightroom 1.0 Win/Mac isn't cheap - $300 list. There's a month free trial though, and since I'm kind of disgusted with Aperture I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm not using it to manage photos, for that I use iPhoto '08. I'm using it for my standard heretical workflow:

1. Import JPEG and RAW images from our Canon SD1000 and Digital Rebel XT.
2. Rename files to embed some roll and date info in the file name.
3. Import into Aperture, Adobe Lightroom or iPhoto for post-processing.
4. Export as JPEG 98%
5. Import into iPhoto '08 for archival storage and uploading.
6. Delete the RAW images.
   

So, for this purpose, how does Adobe Lightroom compare to Aperture?

It's better. Much faster for image browsing, a bit faster than Aperture on my slowish PPC iMac for image editing. LR is easier to learn than Aperture, even though I think the Library/Develop division is dumb.

It's even a better Macintosh application! Aperture uses weird GUI elements, LR sticks mostly to the Apple standards. It's the most Mac-like of all Adobe's apps, because it began life on the Mac.

Aperture's theoretical big advantage is that it can import an iPhoto Library -- but it can't handle video, Photo Books, etc. And, of course, Aperture doesn't support editing of image dates - so I can't use it as an image store anyway.

For what I do today, LR is a better solution.

Aperture is not looking very happy these days ...

Software for creating personal photo sports trading cards

I thought I'd have a fairly easy time making sports/trading cards for the MN Special Hockey Stingers, but it turns out to be harder than I expected.

Back in the days of MacOS 7 and Windows 3.1 I suspect there were lots of software packages to do this sort of thing. In the modern world they seem much harder to find.

Failing a traditional software solution, I figured I'd find an online service that would make cards. I did find one, but it was pretty expensive. This is definitely a niche business.

Thus far I've only found four solutions on any platform (Thanks Apple Discussions):

1. HP sports photo trading cards: This web app will, very, very slowly, create PDF you can print. Requires thick paper, scissors, and blue.
2. Portraits and Prints (OS X) claims some support for printing cards, but there's very little documentation. No free trial either!
3. Photoshop Elements (OS X and Windows): "Old Toad" tells me that it supports creating photo cards.
4. NCR Flip-Pix: My local Office supply store sells NCR Flip Pix (made in Germany?!) trading card sheets. The Flip Pix software for generating prints is a free Windows only download. (Funny note: the documentation says it works on "Windows on a Mac" - Boot Camp. It also says: "... If you are not able to do this by using Bootcamp or other Windows OS for Mac, then please call the customer support line for a CD of similar software that may work on a Mac." I suspect they have an old Mac classic version of this product.)
5. An Apple Canada site suggested iWorks, but didn't provide much detail.
   

I'll update this post if I find anything else. I think it was easier to search for software products 8 years ago ...

Nikon has Canon in a headlock ...

For years Canon has had Nikon on the defensive. Suddenly, Nikon has new life. The light sensitivity of the Nikon D3 is breathtaking. Screw those megapixels, give me ISO any day.

Nikon D3 / D300 Vs. Canon

... One of the things that has a lot of people really bent is that the Nikon D3 can shoot at ISO 25,600. This is three full stops faster than ISO 3200, which for the record is three stops faster than ISO 400. (Just to put things in perspective).

Some nay-sayers have commented, "Ya, so what. It's really noisy). As the teenagers say – "Duhhhh!". Of course it's noisy. It's freak'n ISO 25,600 for Pete's sake!

As in the old joke about the talking dog, it isn't so much what it has to say but rather that it can talk at all. And at ISO 25,600 the D3 really has a lot to say.

At 25,600 most of the noise is chroma noise. What this means is that by converting to monochrome and applying a bit of luminance noise reduction in Lightroom or Camera Raw, one ends up with a file that looks to my eyes like T-Max at ISO 1600, or ISO 800 Tri-X developed in Rodinal. That's 4 – 6 stops better than anything we had in the film days, and at least 2-3 stops better than anything to-date in digital...

I loved the tip for dealing with chroma noise. My puny Canon Digital Rebel XT can shoot at 1,600, but the noise makes this worthless. I'll experiment with this recovery technique.

Watch for this spring's Digital Rebel XT. If Canon doesn't produce a low end dSLR that can shoot good images at ISO 1,600, we'll know they've given up on the low end.

Google extends custom search: even easier to create and embed

I've written previously about Google's Custom Search engine:

• Google Custom Search with Bloglines Search OS X mashup


• Google delivers custom search pages


• Search gone mad - Custom AJAX API search

I like it, even though the last time I tried it the "use all URLs on this page" function was flaky and didn't work with JavaScript generated content. (See: my current custom search collection)

Now Google has added new "on the fly" searching based on page links. Google Blogoscoped has some examples including del.icio.us integration.

Foxit reader replaces Adobe Acrobat reader

I have the full Adobe Acrobat (ugh) on my XP box, so I haven't tried the Foxit Software PDF viewer. It's getting a quite a few positive mentions lately though, so worth remembering.

On OS X Preview is great.